An FBI director’s fascinating life turns into this dull biopic.
KRISTIAN LIN

Mark Harris recently wrote that while film critics often slam a movie whose directors and/or actors are better than its weak script, those same critics hardly ever claim the reverse, that a movie’s great script is butchered b...

OPENING: The Thing (R) The third film version of this story about a group of scientists at the South Pole who discover an alien life form that starts to prey on them. Starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton, Ulrich Thom...

I am not a birder, but I can sympathize with them. Check me out in early December when I’m frantically tracking down Greek experimental films and dramas about depressed Japanese people. I may not get someone else’s obsessio...

OPENING: Conan the Barbarian (R) Jason Momoa (TV’s Game of Thrones) stars in this new adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s novel about a warrior out to avenge the massacre of his village. Also with Rachel Nichols, Rose McGowan,...

Two actors squeeze every laugh out of this identity flip.
KRISTIAN LIN

I find myself becoming more and more impatient with these comedies about married dads pining for their younger, carefree bachelor days. Don’t get me wrong: I totally understand men in that situation wondering about the road n...

On the 447th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth in April, an arts blogger for a West Virginia newspaper wrote that the Elizabethan playwright had aimed his work at the masses, not the elite: “If he were alive today, he’d ...

Stage West’s current production of David Mamet’s acidic political comedy November is the fourth show directed by Dana Schultes, who serves as the company’s director of development. She is, of course, well known to Fort Wo...

Classical music fans have an all-American week to look forward to, and it’s not even close to the Fourth of July. Besides the various performances of John Adams’ works going on locally (see Wednesday’s blurb), the Fort Wo...

The drama is only above-average in this story of bereavement.
KRISTIAN LIN

Whither the prestige picture? I’m talking about straightforward, visually handsome, modestly budgeted films that feature a few high-powered actors tackling weighty issues, usually working from a script with a literary or thea...

In love or at war, Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams are magnificent.
KRISTIAN LIN

Just as falling in love is a part of life, so too is breaking up. Yet most movies leave the subject of breakups in the background, if they address it at all. A breakup often happens to the heroine at the beginning of the movie,...